Only in America

Crikey, there's polls out putting Gingrich in front in Florida. Might be a post South Carolina bubble, but if Romney can't win Florida, he's in big trouble. Same poll shows Santorum trailing Paul. Surely Santorum knows it is over?

I suppose Romney's only chance is to hang on a bit longer and hope people wake up and realise they're on the verge of making Newt Gingrich - NEWT GINGRICH - their presidential candidate. The flaw in this strategy is that it relies on them deciding Mitt Romney is a better option. Which is like saying you prefer cold piss to warm shit.

Send in the clowns

In an interesting twist, Mitten Romney has been told he didn't win Iowa after all:

The Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has suffered a setback when the party stripped him of his victory in Iowa after a final tally of votes.

His rival, the socially conservative former senator Rick Santorum, emerged with the most votes, a majority of 34.

Funny how Romney kept declaring how he'd won Iowa when he was eight votes ahead of Santorum - but now Santourm is a whopping 34 votes ahead, Romney it is all "A virtual tie". Twat.

In the long run, this may actually play into Romney's hands, as it will keep Santorum in the race a bit longer, and thus keep the anti-Romney vote coalescing around Gingrich.

The real winner, of course, is Barak Obama, for whom things are working out brilliantly. Romney and Gingrich are ripping chunks out of each other. Gingrich looks like he's going to win South Carolina, and Romney has been stripped of Iowa. This could drag on for months, draining resources, enthusiasm and authority from whichever one of these clowns is eventually chosen.

Wonder if it is too late for some 'Bolt from the blue' candidate to join the race and win the nomination on a 'Thank fuck it isn't one of those repulsant jokers' ticket?

Still, there is something to be said for the AMerican process - it really exposes candidates to scrutiny. Our leaders just seem to appear and tell us they are king. Whichever one of the Republican nominiees wins the privilege of getting trounced by Obama, they will have earned it.

Odd place, this

According to Alexa, the top searches leading people to lefthandpalm are ...

1	nigger warts	15.25%
2	oliver walker murder case	9.04%
3	chris trotter 2008 sunday star columns	7.78%
4	olive walker	4.09%
5	sunday star columns by chris trotter in 2008	3.89%
6	rehash crap blog	3.71%
7	marsoc	3.71%
8	13 year old in jail	3.33%
9	sunspot cycle length	3.12%
10	corrolate	3.11%

'Nigger warts'?? Who the fuck types that into a search engine?

Other than 15% of my devoted readership, I mean.

Lurgee's paradigm XI: Hansen says the oceans will boil!

You've got to love Anthony Watts, the denier's denier, the gift that keeps of giving.

The latest nugget of excrement to be deposited on his website is a claim that 'unhinged' James Hansen is saying AGW will cause the oceans to boil!!!!!! Like on Venus!!!!! Even though the 'AGW friendly' Wikipedia has a page where John Houghton says, "[there] is NO POSSIBILITY of [Venus's] runaway greenhouse conditions occurring on the Earth"!!!! OMG!!!! Madness!!!!

Or bullshit.

First of all, a minor point - the interview with Hansen is from 2009, if not earlier. It has always been available on the interwebnet. Why is it only now being honoured by Watts? Is he, perchance, finding very little at the bottle of that barrell he is vigorously scraping?

If you actually read what Hansen said, he did not claim Earth's oceans are going to boil as a result of human activity. The crucial passage:

A runaway greenhouse effect means once the planet gets warmer and warmer, then the oceans begin to evaporate. And water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide. So you can get to a situation where it just -- the oceans will begin to boil, and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere. And that happened to Venus.

He's describing, in response to a direct question asking him to explain what the runaway greenhouse effect was, what a runaway green effect is. he is not saying this will happen on Earth. He cites Venus as an example. He is not saying this is what will happen on Earth, and he is not at odds with Houghton.

Watts tries to shore up his shonky argument with a bit of misdirection, bringing up the very tired, CO2-levels--were-higher-in-the-past-and-the-oceans-didn't-boil-then-did-they non-argument. Yes, Anthony, and the atmosphere was very different then, full of all sorts of particulate crap from volcanoes, and probably unbreathable. That balanced out the CO2. But I don't think we want to go there, since our lungs aren't adapted to breathing in that sort of gunk. Anyway, it is a strawman. Hansen is not claiming Human CO2 will cause oceans to boil. He says massive increase in atmospheric water vapour, from melting icesheets, will cause the oceans to boil. The question is, whether the temperature increase from CO2 released from human activity, will be enough to start the processes.

Still, this seems to be a popular meme -of-the-moment. But at least we can be assured anyone referring to it is a hard core, braindead denier.

Coalition scorecard - 50p tax rate

+1 ... David Cameron's intention to retain the 50p rate of tax shows that some sanity remains in Downing Street.

OVERALL: 0/10. Another steal from Labour. Smart politics by Cameron, gradually substituting sensible, centrist policy for the divisive lunacy of Osbornism. Also sane economics. Of course, it's only a rumour at this stage. A few more nudges left may see the coalition in positive territory!

EDIT: This turned out to be untrue, to the Coalition dips into negative territory.  Further offenses on decency included The Bonfire of the Enviornmental Regulations (-1) and continual dithering and in activity over Syria (-1) so an overall score of -2.

I was, of course, completely wrong

"Yes, folks, Perry, Cain, Bachmann and Santorum (remember him?) are officially the Republicans that Republicans won't vote for."

That dig at Rick 'Second in Iowa' Santorum must be one of the most Not Right things I've posted in a while.